Breaking down all the Big 12 tiebreakers for Arizona State going into Week 14

When Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark spoke this summer at the Big 12 football media days, giving his first public remarks since adding four teams from the Pac 12, he made a bold proclamation about his new conference:

"We have star-power and parity; we boast some of the top players and coaches in the game. November will be incredibly exciting and we will brand it as a race to the championship."

Well, here we are in November, and with one week left to go in the regular season there is a four-way tie at the top of the conference. The only real surprise is who those four teams are: Arizona State, BYU, and Iowa State are all 9-2, while Colorado is 8-3, but all four teams are 6-2 in the conference.

While the final week of games will (hopefully) sort things out a bit, this has prompted a question with a pretty convoluted answer: who goes to Dallas to play for the Big 12 championship if there's a multi-team tie?

The Big 12 put out its tiebreaker rules earlier in the year, but deciphering them with so many moving parts has been a bit tricky. The conference has seven different tiebreakers they go through, in order, to determine who the top two teams are in the event of a tie.

• A. The tied teams will be compared based on their head-to-head record during the season.
• B. The tied teams will be compared based on win percentage against all common conference opponents.
• C. The tied teams will be compared based on win percentage against the next highest-placed common opponent in the standings (based on the record in all games played within the conference) proceeding through the standings.
• D. The tied teams will be compared based on combined win percentage in conference games of conference opponents.
• E. The tied teams will be compared based on total number of wins in a 12-game season.
• F. The representative will be chosen based on highest ranking by SportSource Analytics (team rating score metric) following the last weekend of regular-season games.
• G. The representative will be chosen by a coin toss.

The prestigious Sickos Committee has been pulling for the coin toss to come into play ever since these rules were unveiled, but the amount of things that have to go right for that option to be exercised seems unlikely. Still, the tiebreakers are complex, and made all the more nuanced by the fact that several Big 12 teams played each other this year in games that were technically not conference games, which could impact the math for winning percentage against common conference opponents.

Without further ado, here's our best shot at wading through all the madness.

Where Things Stand Right Now

Heading into Week 14, there is a four-team tie for the top spot, as mentioned above. Based on the conference's tiebreaker rules, Arizona State would be ranked as the number one team in the Big 12 based on Tiebreaker B, in which the Sun Devils have the best record against common conference opponents against BYU, Iowa State, and Colorado.

By that same tiebreaker, BYU would figure into the second slot of the Big 12, with Colorado then coming in third ahead of Iowa State. That would mean that Arizona State and BYU would meet in Dallas to play for the Big 12 championship just two weeks after facing off in Tempe. Given how close that one ended up being, a quick rematch with a spot in the College Football Playoff on the line would make for some excellent television.

Alas, there is still one week's worth of games left to be played, and all of this could change between now and then. Arizona State travels to face their bitter rival, the Arizona Wildcats, next week. BYU retutrns home to host Houston. Colorado will host Oklahoma State. And the Cyclones close things out at home against Kansas State. Out of these four teams, only Arizona State plays on the road next week and only Iowa State plays a team with a winning record.

Currently, based on the remaining games left to be played, there are a whopping 24 possible championship matchups. The odds strongly favor two of these four teams to be traveling to Dallas in two weeks, but there are still four other teams in contention: Baylor, Kansas State, Texas Tech, and West Virginia. Of those four, Baylor has the best odds at a mere 13.87% chance to reach the Big 12 championship game.

Of the four teams currently tied for first place, Iowa State has the best odds at 52.34% and the Sun Devils are narrowly behind at 51.56%. BYU sits at 38.67% and Colorado at 25.98% odds to reach the title game. As these odds suggest, if all four teams win their matchup in Week 14, Arizona State would be the number one team and Iowa State would be the number two team.

In that scenario, which seems to be most likely, the Sun Devils take the top spot by virtue of Tiebreaker B. But the Cyclones claim second place thanks to Tiebreaker D, which measures strength of schedule of all conference opponents. And while it wouldn't make a big difference, BYU would finish third due to Tiebreaker B over Colorado.

Still, there's a ton of different scenarios that could happen in this final week of regular season football. For the Sun Devils, the equation is quite simple: win and you're (very likely) in. If Arizona State beats their bitter rival down in Tucson, their odds of reaching the Big 12 title game go up to 98.05%. But if they lose, their odds drop down to 5.08%.

So, in short, nothing is going to be decided solely by the Sun Devils notching their 10th win of the year and beating the rival Wildcats for the first time in three years. That said, a win would significantly increase their chances of going to Dallas, while a loss would almost surely dash those hopes. But hey, no pressure.